


Lonely Hearts (Don't Reap the Seeds)

by halocentury



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Background Relationships, F/M, Hanahaki Disease, Isabella and Lee get mentions, Ivy's good intentions gone bad, M/M, Pining, Unrequited Love, if you know what i mean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:00:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26780287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halocentury/pseuds/halocentury
Summary: After Ed shoots him on the pier, Oswald thought his life was over.Yet Ivy's intervention saves his life.His love life on the other hand, has taken a fatal blow.
Relationships: Oswald Cobblepot & Jim Gordon, Oswald Cobblepot/Edward Nygma, Oswald Cobblepot/Jim Gordon
Comments: 7
Kudos: 36





	Lonely Hearts (Don't Reap the Seeds)

What had ever possessed him to think things would turn out the way he wanted them to? Especially when it came to matters of the heart. Any sense of peace, of happiness and belonging, and more than that, love, was not meant to be his. 

He had his mom, or at least he used to. And yes, she loved him, she had always been there for him, and for the short time he knew Elijah, he filled that spot in his heart that he never knew was there. Sadly the world was filled with many single mothers but finding his father was truly a moment of chance, coming to her grave and finding Elijah already there. 

But that wasn’t the same as physical attraction, besotted, one-true-love. Perhaps he had something close to that with Jim, but feeling that connection with Ed, that was true. He knew it; the way Elijah described his feelings for his mother, he understood it, the pain of being away from her. Ed made him feel more capable than he felt in a long time. He found someone who understood him. He didn’t know it at first, but when they started working together, it finally clicked together.

The peace, that sense of belonging, but also that love, kept him afloat. Through the endless interviews in the press room, the less enjoyable outings into the city. The tendency to put a fake smile on his face warmed into something actually sincere as his thoughts drifted to Ed.

It wasn’t until that one night, waiting for Ed to arrive at the mansion for dinner, that during his second glass of wine, a sudden tear of pain seared through his belly. It was heat and short but sharp jabs of agony, so abrupt and wringing a soft cry out of him, but he reasoned drinking on an empty stomach was the cause of it.

When he saw Ed the following morning, he suffered his first coughing fit shortly after Ed announced he met someone. 

His stomach roiled when Ed rubbed circles against his shoulder, offering to get him a glass of water.

Oswald pulled his hand away from his mouth once he could hear Ed in the kitchen, sorting through glasses and running the water.

In his palm was a blood-flecked petal, white and shaped exactly like a lily. 

The tears came to his eyes instantly. “It can’t be…”

As sudden as the onset was, he figured he had enough time to talk to Ed about the situation. To not just confess his love for the other man, but explain that his health had taken a sharp decline. Ed was, if nothing else, a scientific man at heart. He used to be a forensic pathologist. He would understand that this was critical, that they had to do something.

And yet trying to get even a moment with Ed was impossible, between his own work schedule and Ed forgoing his own job to spend more time with Isabella. 

Each morning he woke up to copper-scented lilies, his condition worsening more rapidly than he anticipated. It was no longer petals but fully-formed flowers, more loitering his bedsheets and floor each consecutive day. Not only was breathing a constant struggle, not to mention blood-loss and the excruciating pain, but the coughing spells lasted up to five minutes. 

His last meet and greet with the press he nearly passed out, only avoiding it until all the reporters had cleared out and two aides rushed to catch him before he hit the floor.

Back in his office, crying into his blood-soaked handkerchief, a lily, radiant in full-bloom, nestled into the once-white, now crimson silk, he tried to draw in a shaky breath. 

He had no other choice, if Ed wasn’t going to be around to help him.

Isabella had to go, or else he would die.

He just never anticipated Ed to have his own say on the issue.

*

It wasn’t the end that he expected, waking up surprisingly dry, even if he was dressed in clothing that had to be second-hand, if not third-hand. He was grateful, he was alive, even if the abundance of flowers in the room he woke up in made him wonder if he was in a greenhouse.

A young redheaded woman came up to his room, a small tray in her hands, explaining what she had cooked for breakfast. He didn’t understand the details as she explained what the various herbs and flowers were intended to do for his healing body. He was just grateful that he wasn’t dead from the bullet Ed put into him.

It was the thought of Ed that led to a dull sensation, an odd prickling in his stomach. Anticipating a coughing spell he clutched his stomach, but the breathlessness and sharp pain never came. 

Confusion settled in, the seconds stretching past as he tuned out Ivy entirely, his eyes widening as horror took over. 

“Ivy…” She was trying to get him to take the spoon for the oatmeal, and no matter how good it smelled, his appetite was gone. “What have you done?” 

“Why weren’t you listening?” She cocked her head, slightly indignant, but pointed to the glass of iced tea again. “So in this glass I have brewed-”

“Perhaps I need to clarify my question.” Pushing himself as upright as the pillows would allow him to, Oswald fixed her with a steely gaze, not intended to be intimidating, but verging on impatience, a look that he often gave his subordinates when they weren’t telling him all the details on a job gone wrong. “Despite being in a frozen river, and shot by someone who I thought was worthy of my trust, I survived. And yet, those weren’t even the most pressing matters in my recent medical history. So please tell me, why am I alive? What did you do to me while I was still unconscious and unable to consent to every medical procedure you did to me?” 

Ivy nodded, unblinking, now understanding the inquiry. “Well, I did notice something out of the ordinary. Very unordinary. I would imagine you hadn’t been ingesting lilies, or their seeds, but I was able to remove all of it - the seeds, the roots, and the flowers. It took several procedures but finally nothing else remained. It had to be started on right away, it was making you anaemic and your lung-capacity was deteriorating rapidly, and combined with your gunshot wound… it was touch and go for a very long time.”

“You… healed me.” With a painful hitch of breath, that had nothing to do with his healing injuries, he ran his hand over his mouth. 

Swallowing, throat dry and but eyes watering, he forced himself to think back to the last exchange he had with Ed, standing with his back to the river, Ed firing the gun at him.

The sadness and betrayal flooded him instantly.

The rush of tears came with the ache of empty, non-existent, love.

*

“Oswald, you look… different.”

He had trekked through freezing conditions, and according to Ivy, he had to continue taking the supplements if he wanted to regain his proper iron levels again. Under her care she was keeping him to a plant-based diet, insisting that until his health was up to her liking, any animal-based proteins were forbidden.

Yet Oswald and Jim knew that wasn’t what Jim was referring to. He may have been paler than usual, but not only was Oswald avoiding Jim’s gaze, he didn’t find the joy in how he used to provoke Jim to grab him by his jacket, or not so subtly track the movement of his lips. 

“That’s what happens when you’re brought back from the dead,” Oswald remarked, forcing a smirk to his face, trying to find some reason to appear happy, fake or not. “Now remember, phone me, as soon as you hear-”

Jim reached for him, and not even by the lapels of his jacket. His hand was on his shoulder, and squeezed before pulling him closer. 

Old habits would’ve involved a flutter of eyelashes, even curling in with the tug to diminish the space between them.

Instead he tried to take a step back, but Jim wouldn’t let him. “I have other things to tend to, Jim. I’ve lost most of my men on grounds of none of them trusting me. I need to build myself a team and track down Ed,” he argued.

“You took the time out of your busy schedule to come find me, you can spare a few more minutes,” Jim insisted, pulling him back towards the stairs.

They both stopped when they heard the release sound on Firefly’s flamethrower, a small flame igniting. “You want me to take care of him?” she asked, eyeing both of them.

“This won’t take long,” Oswald reassured her, tempted to give an exasperated tilt of his head towards Jim, but she understood and rolled her eyes in acknowledgement before powering her weapon off. Continued to keep them in her sights but gave them enough space to have a quiet conversation. 

“Ed told me that he killed you.” Oswald wished that Jim could’ve ever been so relieved to see him before now, to look at him with an almost warm gaze, but his heart felt light for how empty it was. “Are you alright? You are recovered?”

“I still get aches and pains, but let’s face it, I’m accustomed to it. It comes with the job.” He tried to be flippant about it, and it did get a chuckle out of Jim, so it had to have worked. 

Stopped on the landing, continuing to keep their voices low, Jim glanced to Firefly before returning his attention to him. “Something is different though,” Jim added, gaze taking in his face, as though he knew all his tells. 

Granted, they both knew each other well enough, but Oswald had lost a good number of his distinguishing tics after his stay with Ivy.

“Things have changed Jim.” He pushed his chin up when Jim shifted forward, not so much a step but shoulders and face angling in closer. He put on his most confident airs, a shroud he wore, then lost, months before. “I should’ve been a dead man and… I’m not the man I used to be. I’m better. I’m stronger.” Without foolish notions like love to cloud his judgment, he should be free of all his former weaknesses. 

At one point, he considered it his strength. That his hope, his belief in Jim, saved him from death before it all began. His mother, his father. Even his love for Ed, before Isabella entered the picture, made him feel like anything was possible.

Yet for all of Jim’s attempts, he shifted his own gaze, refusing to look him in the eye, at least, until Jim’s hand moved from his shoulder to the back of his head.

“You should like this,” Jim insisted, and even though that rasp to his voice still sent shivers down his skin, it felt more like guilt and embarrassment. 

“Not now,” he argued, hissing it out on a whisper. 

Jim’s eyes narrowed and his fingers squeezed, a soft comforting pressure. “What happened?” 

“I should’ve died!” He snarled, no longer caring about the long-distance stare Firefly was giving them. He lowered his voice again, swallowing tight and working the muscles in his cheeks to keep his voice steady, to fight back the regret that would’ve showed through. “Ed shot me, pushed me into the river, but… someone kindly nursed me back to health. And that… also involved… curing me of my love sickness. I was dying with unrequited love for him. I was suffocating, choking and bleeding on flowers, and she… just saw me as someone to save. She didn’t know, that by curing me of my sickness, that… I would never be able to love, anyone, ever again.”

That did mean to lose the love and affection he had for Ed, but even choosing to meet Jim behind his apartment, that old crush, that one sided attraction, was just as cold as the river he was pushed into. 

When he finally looked up, grateful that Jim allowed him to look back towards the bike for a needed respite, he cringed at the sad, sympathetic look directed at him. “Isn’t there any way to fix that?” Jim asked. 

“As far as I know, it’s irreversible,” Oswald mumbled, forcing the words past the lump in his throat. He argued that he didn’t want the love, it was a hindrance, but knew that he craved it even in its absence. That even touch, such as Jim’s fingers carding through his hair, had him tensing and attempting to back away again. “No, stop, I don’t need feeble gestures of consolation or-”

“I wanted to believe that Lee still loved me, but – she still married Falcone’s son. And even if she did love me, that she would’ve accepted my love for her, I went and shot her husband. The love I had, even as I wanted to protect her from a man who had contracted the Tetch Virus, drove her to push me away.” Jim moved in a little bit closer to whisper, keeping his hand and fingers steady against the back of his head. “That is a love that should never have existed. If any kind of love should be destroyed, it was the one that destroyed three lives.”

“No.” It was a horrible comparison, to think that he would’ve nuzzled into Jim’s touch at one point, and that all he was trying to do now was hide from Jim and Firefly’s looks, twisting his face towards Jim’s arm. “What you and Dr. Thompkins had, at one point, was love. You still love her. Don’t ever let it go. You’ll miss it too much. I know I do.”

“She shut me out, and I know I deserve it.” He could hear Jim’s pain, remembering the things she had to have said and done in the wake of her husband’s death. “If I had learned to let her go, none of this would’ve happened.”

He tried to console Jim, shook his head before looking him in the eye; this was possible when they were talking about Jim’s troubled love life. “You don’t know that for sure.”

“If I could cut out my love for her, I might just do it.”

“It’s… that’s not you,” Oswald reminded, something similar to sympathy linking them together, in the bonds of failed and nonexistent loves. 

“It’s not you either.” And when he saw the hint of sass in Jim’s gaze, Oswald huffed under his breath, still hurting but amused through the painful reminder of their checkered past. “I can’t give you any promises, but… I’ll see if I can get you to talk to someone about Ed. I wouldn’t call it safe, for you to see Ed, or to get involved in said company, but I will try.”

“Thank you.” Exhaling slowly when Jim withdrew his hand, he allowed himself to enjoy the lingering warmth that still seemed to support his head, perhaps preparing himself for seeing Ed again. When everything else was cold and tense, it was a comfort, and he felt his cheeks warm too. 

“Try to not get yourself killed again,” Jim added once he was allowed to step back.

Meeting Jim’s smirk with one of his own, he cocked a shoulder. “No promises. It’s not my fault so many people like pointing guns at me, yourself included.”

“I’ll make an exception for you, currently. Consider it a favour.”

With another huff, his eyes feeling dryer than they had been a couple minutes earlier, he glanced back to Firefly. She was regarding them curiously but chose to not comment, even though she raised an eyebrow to him only. 

He couldn’t blame her for that. 

Appreciated the fact that she remained silent as they left, returning to the delivery van that was acting as their transportation street side. He still had a busy day ahead of him, even if he worried just how much Jim was saying things just to make him feel better, or if Jim truly meant them. 

He didn’t have a choice, but Jim did.

He only hoped he would choose wisely.


End file.
